Dana Tracy

NORTHAMPTON – Dana Tracy, 71, of Northampton, died on July 15, 2018.

She leaves her husband Greg D'Unger and sons Alex Tracy-D'Unger and Daniel Tracy-D'Unger, as well as two brothers and two sisters.

She grew up an Irish, freckle-faced redhead in poverty in Dedham. She knew she was poor because a can of lima beans that had been donated to 'the poor' at church arrived at home in a box delivered for 'the poor'. As a child in school, she decided to fake being deaf. It was simply a matter of never raising her hand if she heard a sound. She carried the ruse so far as being enrolled in a sign language class until a miraculous cure.

As a teen, she joined a girlfriend who stole her boyfriend's car on a trip to New York. At 16 she became pregnant and was kicked out of her home and shuttled through foster care (which she described as providing cheap child care for other families) and finally to a 'home for wayward girls' where she delivered with minimal attendant care. She loved being a mom, but without any support from family or society, she was forced to give Kevin up for adoption – a decision that always haunted her.

She joined the VISTA program in 1965 and worked on the Navajo reservation where she developed a love for weaving. She married and moved to San Francisco where she studied theater and joined a semi- professional theater group, and played the lead in a performance of Lysistrata. She divorced and returned to Massachusetts and settled in Northampton where she worked as a proofreader and copy editor at Gazette Printing.

Her creative skills were put to work when she performed as Chitra during Smith College's 100th anniversary celebration of Mahatma Gandhi and by writing and producing a radio play for National Public Radio.

She married Greg in 1971 and being a feminist was forced to endure the judicial system which didn't like the idea of her keeping her maiden name. She was one of the first in western Massachusetts to gain this right. Once Alex arrived, we both took on the system again when the city clerk of Northampton refused to let us register his last name as Tracy-D'Unger. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rejected a suit by state clerks to keep control over naming children and the Northampton clerk soon acquiesced.

Meanwhile, Dana devoted her time to Alex's care and Daniel's when he was born. She became an accomplished knitter and seamstress and won many blue ribbons at the Three County Fair. She also studied weaving at Hill Institute and became an accomplished weaver. She and Greg alternately worked their way through hard times, but Dana still found time to deliver a well-received lecture about bees at a Mass Audubon nature conference.

She returned to her education by joining the Five College Women's Studies program where she delivered a talk on Barriers to Breastfeeding Among Low-Income Women and by getting a B.A. with honors at UMass, Amherst.

She worked for Family Planning Council of Western Massachusetts as a bilingual counselor – having learned Spanish at Casa Latina. She also worked for the WIC program as a Food Stamp Outreach Coordinator and received many awards for her creativity and presentations to statewide conferences. At the Hampshire Community Action Commission she did outreach in support of breastfeeding, again using her imagination to enlist numerous area bookstores to display children's books featuring breastfeeding in their windows during World Breastfeeding Week.

She volunteered as a story reader at Lilly Library, in the pantry at the Northampton Survival Center and as an organizer for an after school Spanish program.

A few years after being diagnosed with Parkinson's, she retired and devoted her time to reading, writing poetry and short stories, and various art projects. She and Greg were regulars at downtown restaurants, Look Park, Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom.

I miss her dimpled smile, her wit and wisdom, fierce determination and anecdotes of a life fully lived.